Scripting News for 4/30/2008

Tales from the Bizarro world 

The wish list thing is working! 

Today I got two gifts from the Amazon wish list I started. As items come off the list, I add more items.

They were much appreciated! I got the McCartney album CD and a dozen reporter’s notebooks, my favorite way to take notes while I’m programming or writing (along with Pentel sign pens, of which I have hundreds).

You guys are the greatest!!

PS: Someone bought me a great puppet! Awesome!!

Why the press likes Obama again 

First, I’ve given Obama another $100 today for a total of $900. It’s the 30th, the end of a month. Of the three remaining candidates, he’s still by far the best choice. And he still is the best person I’ve ever had the chance to support, imho.

Yesterday he threw Rev Wright under the bus, a term I never liked, and still really don’t, but it was the right thing to do, at exactly the right moment, maybe not for cyncial reasons (the ones the press applies) but for moral reasons. If you’ve been going to a church as long as he’s been going to Wright’s church, it should take a lot to get you to say what Obama said yesterday.

I have friends who have stood by me in tough times, but have done things that disappointed me, and I’ve taken time-outs from the friendships because of this, but it’s pretty rare that the bridges are so thoroughly burned that we never relate as friends again. But it has happened.

If we want to trust Obama, he shouldn’t abandon his pastor just because it would be the expedient thing to do, esp when it was so clear that the press was misrepresenting his sermons. I watched them, in full, and understood what the Reverend was saying, and I also understood that the context wasn’t familiar to me. They were recorded before a member of his congregation was a leading candidate for President, some of them before he was even an Illinois state senator. If you said that this isn’t that unusual for a black church, what choice would I have but to take your word.

Same for a speech at the NAACP. How do I know what’s usual there. If you tell me this is how it goes, I have no basis for saying or believing otherwise.

But the National Press Club? That I understand, and now I see Rev Wright in a whole new light. I still can’t say one way or the other if he acted appropriately in his sermons, but that was not how you address the media. They’re too dangerous. That’s the way you talk on your front porch on a hot weekday evening, hanging out with your friends, arguing politics and gossiping about a neighbor. Not in front of cameras that are broadcasting your words around the world, when you’re talking about someone you supposedly care about, someone who not only is your friend, but is likely the next President of the United States, your country, which you have served, that you say you love.

Look, the explanation is really simple. When you rise, even a little, some friends don’t get it. Ask anyone who’s won a lottery, or Deal or No Deal, or whose company IPO’d successfully. Ask them about the chickens that come home to roost. That’s what happened with Rev Wright. I’m sure of it. I recognize it, having been around the phenomenon, on a much smaller scale, many many times.

Anyway, the reason the press is so happy is that they got caught being assholes. It was just a few days ago I was giving them a hard time for the missing mea culpas. Now they don’t have to retract or apologize for screwing it up, Obama just gave them cover. And so they’re moving on. The Republicans, if they want to bring up this issue, may well find that the press sides with Obama. “We always said Wright was a bad apple,” they will say, and maybe even Obama agreed, but he was being loyal to a friend, and who can fault him for that. It’s a good quality, but enough is enough.

And I don’t think the door is closed forever for Rev Wright. You can be pissed at a friend, for cause or not, and come back from it, esp if someone connects with Wright about the seriousness of what he did, and how much damage he might have done if people took him seriously (they didn’t) and somehow his condemnation of Obama stuck (it didn’t).

I believe Obama, and I believe in Obama because I believe in my country. I care about how the Constitution has been trampled in the last 7.5 years, it’s going to take a lawyer like Obama who doesn’t take shortcuts to first restore our confidence in the architecture of the US, and give us a fresh start in the world, which would see an Obama presidency as a cause for hope for them. Rev Wright didn’t get how many of us now look to Obama to lead us, he may not be ready for it, but that’s not our problem or Obama’s, it’s his.

Update: Cross-posted at Huffington.

Scripting News for 4/29/2008

Buffet of human fool 

Yesterday I had an epiphany that Rev Wright might not be any more of a problem for President Obama than Billy Carter was for President Carter. To which there was an repeated chorus of “You can’t choose your relatives but you can choose your pastor.” I know I know. I meant that Wright is as irrevocably linked to Obama as Billy was to Jimmy. But maybe not. Maybe Wright was so outrageous that the idea of him being a persistent noose around Obama’s neck is so distasteful to the pundit class, that they’re going to sweep him out on their own? Oh that would be so sweet. They created the monster, he turns out to be even worse in reality, so bad even they can’t stand him, so out he goes.

I’ve read piece after piece about how it’s time for Obama to throw him under the bus. But the irony is that he probably doesn’t have to do it now. The press created Wright, and they are uncreating him. It’s “undo,” at a human level.

I liken his appearance yesterday at the National Press club to shark-infested water. Wright was joking in a way that one jokes with friends. But he wasn’t with friends (though he brought some with him, they were the ones cheering him on). He was in the water with sharks and feeding them high quality chum and putting blood in the water and screaming look I can swim with the sharks, this is fun, it isn’t bad, I’m the boss, the new Martin Luther King, but I own the president. I’m the power behind the man, and you’re all going to be taking orders from me, starting now. The sharks said “Oh boy a full course all you can eat buffet of human fool!”

If the Clintons set this up, as some think they did, they overplayed their hand, they were too good.

Eugene Robinson wrote today in the Washington Post: “Politically, by surfacing now, [Wright] was throwing Barack Obama under the bus. Sadly, it’s time for Obama to return the favor. “

This suggests a one-day conference after the primaries are over with religious leaders of all faiths and races to discuss religion in a world where the President may be of mixed race. Focus on the positive, we’re going through all our race issues this political season. It’s messy, but we’re learning a lot. Be sure to invite many many formerly Republican religious leaders. Some serious lemonade can be made out of the Wright lemon.

PS: There’s an piece coming soon — Barack Obama as a coral reef. See this piece on Twitter as a coral reef for a preview.

Funky Time cover 

Scripting News for 4/28/2008

Om blesses our humble startup 

Om Malik writes about SwitchABit, BetaWorks, Twittergram, John Borthwick and myself.

I have a meeting to go to, I’ll write a blog post about SwitchABit when I get back.

Short version: Excited!

Berkeley street at dusk 

Click on the pic for details.

Is Rev Wright the new Billy Carter? 

I’ve heard Rev Wright compared to Al Sharpton, after his clowning answers to questions at the National Press Club early today. I wondered, then I realized that while he can be a very sincere even profound philosopher, he may end up being more like the brother of President Jimmy Carter, who was a constant source of embarassment to the candidate and the President, but in the end was more of a punchline, endorser and a good ole boy (and a brand of beer) than a factor.

Update: Cross-posted at H.

Overlooked detail? 

I was going to ask Gabe Rivera if he watched Twitter accounts to influence TechMeme. What got me on this train of thought was a piece on TechCrunch about the perennial problem of meme-watching on Twitter. Why invent something new, I wondered, when all you have to do is link the new link medium to the tried-and-true meme-watcher?

That led me to this question — how would Gabe know which Twitter account is associated with a given blog? He could scrape, and maybe sometimes the blog would link to a Twitter account in its margins (mine does, for example), but that seems like too much work, and it’s too unreliable.

Then I thought why not use the same mechanism we use for feed discovery? Indeed. Why not?

<link rel="twitstream" href="http://twitter.scripting.com/daveRss.xml" />

What do you think?

Update: I added the link element above to the source of Scripting News, on an experimental basis.

Scripting News for 4/27/2008

The mea culpas didn’t come 

At best the MSM got the Wright story wrong, at best it was a mistake.

But if it were a mistake, there would have been some mea culpas today, after seeing the Wright interview, someone would have said they got it wrong, maybe even apologized for contributing to the vilification of Rev Wright.

But the mea culpas didn’t come. They rationalize it, generally, by saying it wasn’t a real interview. At least they didn’t completely ignore it, but they came close.

I was reminded of the aftermath of the Karla Faye Tucker execution in Texas. Because she was a woman, and religious, repentent and reformed, she didn’t seem to be a threat to society. She went on Larry King to plead for her life. Tucker made the perfect spokesmodel for advocates of the death penalty. She admitted to a horrible murder, but she was such an attractive murderer. It was a way to show support for the cause even when the subject was a compelling person, someone you might like to know. There was a huge national debate about it.

On February 3, 1998, she was executed. I wondered why it was so quiet. Why weren’t the advocates of the death penalty who said they needed her death to feel closure weren’t saying “See I told you so, I feel closure now, don’t you?”

They didn’t say that because they didn’t feel it. Murder isn’t an equation that can be balanced. You can’t balance the taking of a life by taking a life. It doesn’t work that way.

I’ll never understand why we enjoy a circus like the shaming of Rev Wright, a man who should be proud of his life, not ashamed. I feel empathy for the person in the middle of a threatening circle, don’t you? I feel empathy for a murderer being put to death. I feel rage for the innocent people who are put to death by the state, in my name, in the name of justice.

I think there was silence about the death of Karla Faye because there was so much shame about it. The justice system needed her to shut up. Maybe that’s the same reason the press has nothing to say now that Wright has spoken and shows they got the story horribly wrong. Maybe, to preserve their sense of integrity, they need him to shut up. And he’s talking. That’s a problem for them.

Since the press isn’t going to cover this, it’s up to the people to cover the press. Obama won’t talk about it either (makes me wonder about Obama). I think the problem is bigger than getting Obama elected, we need to reform how ideas and information flows in our country.

Update: Cross-posted at Huff.

Twitter spewage among my contacts 

On a lighter note…

Everyone loves lists that rank people based on popularity and how much UGC the U generates. And of course everyone loves Twitter. So here’s the perfect meaningless distraction for a Sunday afternoon with nothing better going on, a ranking of my contacts on Twitter in order of the amount of spew they create! Toxic spew, or green spew, it doesn’t matter — it’s quantity over quality, the triumph of Web 1.95.

http://twitter.scripting.com/spewage.html

Of course Scoble tops the list. I’ll let you figure out what that means. I chuckled when I saw Guy Kawasaki coming in at #4. I guess his semi-spam pays off (if this means anything, which it doesn’t — see the disclaimer).

If you have any questions or comments post them here.

My Amazon wishlist 

From time to time people have asked me to start an Amazon wishlist. I don’t know why I never did it, but last week I was undecided whether I should or shouldn’t buy an EyeFi card for my new camera, and thought — this is exactly the kind of thing that should be on a wishlist. If I get one, I’ll review it, but it’s not one of those things I’m so sure I’ll use that I want to plunk down the money for it.

So that was the moment. I started a wishlist. It’s linked to in the right margin of Scripting News. If you ever feel like giving me a gift, now you know how to do it. I’ll try to keep it stocked with relatively inexpensive things I’d like to try out, or things I need that (again) don’t cost too much. Maybe from time to time I’ll put a whopper in there, but I don’t want to be greedy. Let’s see how it works.

Scripting News for 4/26/2008

Hope is what we have, Hillary 

She did it again today, made fun of the idea of hope. She says that she and John McCain know how Washington works, and if hope had anything to do with it, they would have figured it out a long time ago.

She’s got to be smart, an astute politician, but on the subject of hope, she’s naive and tone deaf.

Even so, I’m sure she’s right, there’s no hope in Washington. We’ve been actively killing our empire, at least since Bush took office, maybe longer. The world no longer has to come to us to buy the products we used to make. We’re a service economy and we make durable goods. We have lots of natural resources, but not the one we need most, oil. Inflation is becoming a very serious concern, and soon if things go as they look like they’re going, it could get really bad. Meanwhile it looks like Bush is going to start another war with Iran before he leaves office, and as with the last war, guess who’s helping stoke the fires? Yeah, Clinton is.

Even if somehow we could revive our economy, re-educate our workforce, take care of our health, get out of Iraq, avoid war with Iran, we have to look forward to a devastated environment, one that quite possibly won’t sustain human life much longer. Certainly not with the quality of life we had in the 20th century.

Watching the eloquent Rev Wright last night, and hearing his story of the religion of recent slaves, what else do they have but hope? If your people live in poverty, most of them with terrible futures in front of them, what can get you through the night, other than hope? Hope is serious business for people with nothing to look forward to. If HRC ever had to live on hope she’s long forgotten it. But for most people in America, facing an uncertain economic future, with no faith in the sanity of the government (an understatement for me) hope is what we have, Hillary.

Why so quiet? 

I expected a roaring debate in the political blogosphere this morning, and on cable news after the Friday night Bill Moyers interview with Rev Jeremiah Wright. Instead, there’s eerie quiet.

The most I could find was this post on Protein Wisdom saying that Moyers didn’t play hardball with Wright. It’s true, he didn’t. Instead he did what I wish more journalists would, he interviewed him in a way that helped us get to know the person. He let him speak his piece, so we could listen.

There’s so much to admire about Rev Wright, but first, the shame of the professional media, who hounded not only Wright, but members of his congregation, incluing a woman in a hospice, to try to uncover more dirt about Wright and thereby embarass Barack Obama.

Wright isn’t running for office, he points out, it isn’t his job to get our vote, it’s his job to help his congregation, to help them understand the world they live in, to help them do better in that world, and to prepare them for what they believe comes in the afterlife.

Watching Wright, I wondered if Sean Hannity’s preacher could stand up to the kind of objectification this man has withstood. What about Tim Russert’s? How about the people who are close to Charlie Gibson and Andrea Mitchell? And how about the CEOs of Time-Warner, GE, the Sulzbergers and the Murdochs? These people have never run for office, they’ve never been vetted or elected. Could they come out so well after being put through the wringer that Wright has been through.

I think the silence comes from the fact that there still is some humanity in the press and in the blogosphere, and those who watched Moyers and really listened to Wright, realized that he’s not a liability to Obama, he’s an asset. At least some of the polish, the quiet confidence, self-respect, intelligence and grace we see in Obama must have rubbed off this man.

Watching Wright gave me pride in being an American, and shame at the same time, for coming from a country so willing to objectify and villify this person before checking out whether the characterization was accurate. Even the supposedly courageous and thorough NY Times calls his oratory “racist” in an editorial in today’s paper. Based on what? I’ve watched the sermons that have been excerpted; if these are racist, then every other preacher in the US is racist too.

Wright says the religion of the people on the deck of a slave ship must be different from the religion from the people under the deck. On the deck, god is justifying the practice of slavery, and below — god gives them hope that someday they will be free. My people, the Jews, understand this very well, it’s part of our tradition. We’ve just celebrated the holiday of Passover, a feast that’s all about the pride of an enslaved people. If we’re still telling the story, passing it down from generation to generation, after 3000 years, why should we be critical of the African-Americans who are telling the story of their enslavement, which ended only 145 years ago, and whose manifestations are still with us today.

We, the United States, have made mistakes, and those mistakes are as much who we are as our triumphs. The failures leave behind people and their culture, their music, their legends, their religion and their hopes. Sure it seems strange when you hear it for the first time, but that’s good! Because the second time it’s not so strange, and eventually it becomes part of our melting pot, and enriches all our lives.

If you haven’t watched the Wright interview, make the time to do so. You won’t be sorry.

Update: Cross-posted at Huffington.

Scripting News for 4/25/2008

Wright interview in audio 

I was able to watch the Wright interview on adamdeyong’s Slingbox in Newport News, Virginia.

I recorded it, but now the video is available on the PBS website, and the audio is at the link below.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/rss/media/BMJ-1203.mp3

Thanks for this very excellent program!

Tonight’s news 

Bill Moyers Journal this evening will have Rev Wright as his guest, and it won’t be broadcast in the Bay Area until 10PM Pacific. It will air at 6PM Pacific on WGBH in Boston.

This of course is a major news event, spinning will start on the web in real time, as it airs. This happens when ABC runs a debate, they hold the broadcast as if it were a sitcom, for three hours, when they should give it the same treatment they give a sports event. People on the west coast, such as yours truly, are not able to be part of the online event as it unfolds. Imho these events should be broadcast simultaneously around the world, and repeated if necessary.

We need at least audio access to the interview while it’s being aired on the east coast, and ideally an MP3 to distribute via BitTorrent starting roughly at 7PM Pacific.

Would anyone on the east coast like to help out? Please post a comment if so.

Given that it’s PBS, the program may be available on the web at the same time it airs on the east coast. If you have any information about that, it would be much appreciated.

TwitterOutliner 

There might be two or three people who can use this tool.

I’m one of them, that’s why I developed it.

Scripting News for 4/24/2008

The crazy baseball fan rule 

Every so often a beer-drunk fan will run on the field during a baseball game causing a delay while the cops chase him down. Back in the days of streaking sometimes these fans would run out on the field naked.

You’ll never see one of these scenes on TV because there’s a rule that the broadcasters are not allowed to follow the drunk baseball fan onto the field. If they were to broadcast the drunk fan, the theory goes, that would just encourage more people to do it, meaning more delayed games, annoyed players, offended fans and busted streakers.

It seems to me this very simple rule should be adopted by news networks when it comes to the most hideous attack ads.

Example. The North Carolina Republican Party has yet to spend a dime running a racist attack ad against Obama, one that McCain and the national party swear they don’t want them to run. But millions of TV viewers have seen the ad, repeatedly, run for free on CNN, MSNBC, Fox, etc. This seems grossly unfair, and how does it not count as a campaign contribution?

We’ve seen this before, Bush swore that the swiftboat ads that questioned John Kerry’s honor and patriotism were unfair and he didn’t want them run, but they helped him anyway, and somehow I doubt his sincerity as I doubt McCain’s. But you can’t really blame them, in this age many candidates believe they must do whatever they have to do, no matter how immoral or unethical, to get elected. In the analogy, they’ll always run onto the field, naked if they have to, to get past the competition.

But why should we tolerate the news organizations giving free air time to the campaigns? Aren’t they making an illegal campaign contribution when they run a Republican attack ad without giving equal time to Democratic attack ads?

Maybe they could invoke their integrity (as they so often do when it suits them) for the good of the electoral process and force the attackers to pay for the air time? And maybe if they weren’t granted so much free air time, seemingly in proportion to their ugliness, perhaps fewer of them would even be produced.

Update: Cross-posted at Huffington.

What to do about Rev Wright 

Rev Wright was interviewed by Bill Moyers, an interview that will air tomorrow and will certainly restart the pundit-mania over all things Wright and what it supposedly means.

I’ve watched some of the sermons that are excerpted, in their entirety, and in every case the soundbites do not express his meaning. In every case I found the Wright sermons not only fair and American but compelling. As much as any Christian sermon I’ve heard, more so than most.

I also understand that black churches are different from white churches. I don’t go to either, never have, doubt I ever will. Churches are a totally foreign experience to me. If you made me choose candidates based on the sermons their preachers give I couldn’t, and I find it insulting that some people think I should. I think they have lost their way, they have lost their American-ness. At least as I understand it.

This country was founded without a national religion. You aren’t entitled to impose your religious values on anyone else. It’s right there up front in the beginning of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

If the pundits make a difference, then we have to do something about this. I think the only remedy that’s going to work is to take this out of the realm of partisanship and outside the realm of punditry. Ask a couple of widely respected Americans, one from each party, to view all the tapes of the Wright sermons, and to talk privately with members of his church and the reverend himself. Listen to both sides. Take testimony from people who object. Get a lawyer to represent the p.o.v that Wright disqualifies Obama to be President and hear him or her out. Depose witnesses. Get someone to take the other side, whatever that is. Let’s have a trial. Let’s get this out of the realm of sensationalism. We have to create our own venue because the existing ones aren’t fair.

My guess is that it won’t take ten minutes to see that this is all about race. That the supposed strangeness of the black church is the only issue. I believe this because at first I found the Wright soundbites very offensive, but over time, as they became familiar, I couldn’t remember what the fuss was about. I think the whole thing loses its power as it becomes less strange. And the best remedy is to make a huge deal about it, but outside the realm of the idiots on cable news. Dignify the whole thing and the issue evaporates.

The press likes to position itself as the referees, which implies a standard of fairness and impartiality and adherence to well-understood rules. They are only referees in a world gone mad. Let’s now create a venue for public discourse that is fair.

Fred Wilson: “At least Barack is not running away from who he is. Hillary is pretending to be a Republican man.”

Obama leading McCain in Minnesota 

Rasmussen Minnesota poll: Obama 52%, McCain 38%.

San Francisco from Indian Rock 

Hillary explains what superdelegates do 

HRC: “Voters are an important part of the process.”

http://sundaygang.com/clinton/2008/04/24/hrcOnVoters.mp3

For the full context see Jon Stewart on the Daily Show.

John McCain a Martian? You decide. 

Scripting News for 4/23/2008

John McCain, spawn of the devil? You decide. 

More fun, less stuff 

Bush 1.0 

Nancy & Newt siting on a couch 

Scripting News for 4/22/2008

Spooky white plant 

Dusty Miller is “grown primarily for its attractive silver-gray foliage…”

IRC for Pennsylvania Primary 

I started a chatroom for tonight’s primay.

irc://irc.freenode.net/#PennsylvaniaPrimary

CNN, MSNBC say it’s too early to call but HRC is leading.

How to follow me on FriendFeed 

I’m designating FriendFeed as my backup, when Twitter goes down, you can catch my stream, uninterrupted, over there.

Here’s how to follow me on FriendFeed.

1. Open an account on FriendFeed, or sign in to an existing account.

2. http://friendfeed.com/davew

3. You should see a “Subscribe to Dave Winer” button below my name. Click it.

4. When Twitter goes down, you can get my full stream, uninterrupted, at FriendFeed. I won’t be able to tell you that when Twitter is down, so try to remember it.

5. If you prefer to use a different service, let me know, and I’ll try to set it up so you can follow me there. If you can set it up yourself, here’s the OPML version of my stream (the source), and the RSS feed derived from the OPML. Pretty sure I’ll release the OPML Editor-based tool I’m using to manage the stream.

How to decouple from Twitter, now 

Twitter is still out.

Mike Arrington posits that because they have a monopoly there is no reason for them to hurry to get back online. I agree. That’s why we have to break the monopoly now.

And it’s not as dire as it may seem, esp for people who use a desktop client.

Here’s what the developers of these products can do to make users safe from Twitter outages: Offer users the option to have their stream of outbound tweets saved as an RSS feed that can be read by FriendFeed and other RSS-based tools, in addition to posting directly to Twitter.

Then, the user can do what I did in FriendFeed, point it to the RSS feed, and turn off FriendFeed’s connection to Twitter.

In FriendFeed, everyone will still see your updates though a little more slowly. And when Twitter goes down, everyone who cares about your updates can switch over to FriendFeed, perhaps temporarily. That’s what Scoble is recommending.

I think FriendFeed should deliberately try to appeal to Twitter users, by reorganizing their UI to be familiar to us, but so far they haven’t wanted to do that. However, at some point, some ambitious entrepreneur is going to want to compete with Twitter directly, and all they’ll have to do is latch onto our RSS feeds and voila, you don’t need Twitter to be up to have the same effect as Twitter. (Is anyone out there ready to go? This would be a fantastic week to launch.)

The only way this bootstrap can happen is if Twitter is down for an extended period while important stuff is going on. Well today is the long-awaited Pennsylvania primary, and the Web 2.0 expo is happening this week in SF. How will we manage without Twitter? Necessity is the mother of invention, imho.

I’d encourage the people who make the desktop tools to get on this right away. If developers want to discuss it here, I’ll be online through the day (and grasping for whatever returns are coming in from PA).

Scripting News for 4/21/2008

A new strategy for Twitter outages 

Okay, I’ve bit the bullet, I’m going to change what I do when Twitter is down.

1. When Twitter is down I will post updates to an RSS feed.

http://twitter.scripting.com/daveRss.xml

2. You may follow this feed in any tool that can follow an RSS feed. These include FriendFeed, Jaiku and of course many others.

I want to accumulate a list of services that can follow RSS feeds in a Twitter-like fashion (i.e. river of updates). If you know of others, please post a comment here, with detailed user-level instructions for following a feed. I will try to figure out how to add a feed to my profile on FriendFeed. (Any help would be appreciated.)

I feel pretty good about this. I have a nice tool that I might use even when Twitter is up.

Update #1: I’ve fixed FriendFeed so it’s now following, in addition to the feed for scripting.com, and my Twitter and Flickr accounts, also my “rainy day” feed, above. So, if Twitter goes down, you can just start using FriendFeed instead if you want to follow my tweets. Pretty cool. Let’s hope they know how to scale!

Update #2: Here’s a screen shot that illustrates items from the rainy day feed showing up in my FriendFeed stream. If you follow me over there, you’ll get the updates automatically, you don’t have to do a thing.

Update #3: Here’s a screen shot of the outliner-based tool that I use to author the rainy day feed. I’ve turned off the connection betw Twitter and FriendFeed, so I’m now committed to using this tool to author my Twitter stream. I think it’ll be okay. Already my posting volume is back to normal, even though the Twitter outage persists.

If this were a normal day on Twitter… 

It wouldn’t be a normal day, because tomorrow is the Pennsylvania primary and a lot of polls are coming out right now, and they’re presenting an interesting story. But that story can’t be told, because our main communiation platform, Twitter, is down.

Yes, it serves me right, and I, of all people, know better, than to build a network on a single point of failure, depending on one company, that is known for producing unreliable systems in an industry with incredibly thin skin (how can they get better if they won’t listen). In other words, this is hardly Murphy’s Law, it was easily predictable. It was likely.

In my own defense, we were lulled by months of relatively reliable service from Twitter into believing they were on the path to even more reliability. I stopped encouraging potential competitors to enter the market, now look where we are. No second source (Pownce, as much as I like it, is not a replacement for Twitter, neither is FriendFeed, though I thought they might be, but they said they weren’t interested when I visited with them).

We need some big infrastructure companies to get into this game. One is not good enough. We also need standards so that tools that are built to work with one work with the others. There’s no time for a standards body, so if you’re getting into this business, please, just use the Twitter API, as imperfect as it may seem.

No matter how reliable Twitter seems in the future I won’t change my mind about this. We need them to have serious competition, so we have a Plan B when something like this happens, which it will, not a matter of probability, imho.

Update: A new strategy for dealing with Twitter outages. A “rainy day” RSS feed of downtime tweets. Important if you depend on my twitterings.

The Twitter outage persists 

Monday morning, the outage that started Friday night, is still going on.

As a test, I posted a picture last night before signing off, only 62 reads, which is very low for a link that should have gone to over 8000 people. (Admittedly it was Sunday night in the Calif, but Twitter is a world wide thing, and it’s already 7:30AM on the east coast of the United States.)

Also, still no notice of the outage and what they’re doing to clear it on the Twitter blog.

http://blog.twitter.com/

Not good.

PS: Amazon CTO Werner Vogels checks in on the Twitter outage.